[If Obsidian + Kickstarter = ?]

I think what makes an rpg fun is the merging of two separate elements: strategic fighting, a sort of battle-chess, and a strong story (interactive fiction) to provide a backbone and motivation for the strategic fighting. It's kind of a hybrid game that seamlessly merges these two elements. Any game that supplies those two elements is fine with me.

 

I think the fantasy setting would be the easiest to do well. You guys have done it many times before, and it's just easier to set up the strategy aspect of the game. All of the strategic roles are pretty much all set up in our minds: offensive fighter, stealth assassin, defensive fighter, offensive magic user, defensive magic user, nature magic user etc. I guess it's really the existence of magic that adds these additional strategic chess pieces. OTOH, coming up with a good story seems harder, but maybe that's because I've never liked fantasy fiction per se and find it difficult to imagine good stories in a world of monsters and dragons and magic. I think those worlds are interesting. I just can't come up with any story ideas more complex than save the princess or escape the dungeon kinds of cliches. Not that interesting stories cannot be made with those simplistic sorts of ideas. It's all in the details. But if you managed to come up with the Torment story I'm sure you can come up with more. The MOTB story was pretty good too.

 

The Scifi setting doesn't have any sort of preset strategic roles, but it does have some strategic possibilities if done right and coming up with interesting stories seems easier. There are also films and novles to steal ideas from. Have you seen the pilot from the Battlestar Galactica remake? They took ideas from both Blade Runner and The Terminator and made it work. There are some rich philosophical issues there involving humanity and its failings etc.

 

And then there are alien invasion scenarios as in The Forge of God or Footfall or even Anathem. The problem with those is making the fighting strategic. Obviously the aliens would always have an advantage over the humans. You might be able to give the aliens different kinds of powers besides just their advanced weaponry or give their technology advanced powers, but humans would just be humans with human weapons. If you set it in a distant future I suppose we could also have tech devices which gave us some advanced powers to make combat a bit more interesting. Although Fallout proved you don't really need magic for battles to be interesting, it does remove some strategic complexity. And then there are alternate history, time travel, and alien abduction scenarios.

 

One problem in this setting is making the fighting strategic and fun. It can easily just become a FPS with a good story and then you have to be sure that the fighting really is enjoyable. In Alpha Protocol that was the problem for me. I didn't enjoy the fighting at all and never had a chance to explore the story because of that. I'm pretty picky about shooters. I liked the shooting mechanics in Crysis and GTA4, but not much else. I think good shooting dynamics are deceptively difficult to make. Although the shooting in FONV was fun. Not as fun as the shooting in Crysis or GTA4, but still fun. In fact I enjoyed the real time shooting more than the turn based version of it, although I think maybe the turn based version was somewhat crippled. I'm not sure what happened with Alpha Protocol, but it makes me cautious about asking for something with shooting in it. Maybe if only the enemies had guns and the main character had stealth and melee powers (except for the stealth, sort of like Alien I suppose).

[Initial Kickstarter Responses]

I don't think they were passionate and proud about DS3. That falls under the category of making license plates. I don't think MCA even worked on that Diablo clone. Another Diablo clone is just what the world needed and Obsidian were passionate about providing it? As far as South Park, I'm left speechless. I don't even know what to say. What's next? A Beavis and Butthead game? That stuff isn't about art. It's about doing what you think will make the most money. Pandering to the lowest common denominator. A race to the bottom. If they were already doing what they wanted I don't think they would need a kickstart project. The problem is that real cRPGs are dead and buried. RIP. Good ones are profitable, but not profitable enough for publishers and investors.

[Initial Kickstarter Responses]

Have you discussed the idea with Feargus? What are his views on the matter? I would hope that you would jump at the chance to make a game which you could be truly proud of again. This DS3 and South Park business seems really embarrassing and shameful. It almost seems like you guys are pulling a Bioware on your old loyal fans. Even before Bioware was bought out, they sold out. They weren't artists. They were businessmen. You are a game designer and writer who now co-owns your own studio. If that doesn't give you the ability to do projects like this then what's the point?

 

Maybe you should segment a part of your studio just for lower budget, but real RPGs and/or interactive novel PS:T type games. You could even give it a separate name to make fans of your work realize that they can expect something more like PS:T/FO1/F02/MOTB/FONV and less like DS3 and South Park etc. Make it clear that the sub-studio will absolutely not compromise on things like what the kiddies would call 'walls of text' and slow, strategic, thinking-man's combat that is more battle chess than street fighter. A niche market is still a market. It hasn't disappeared just because it has been flooded with little kids from the Facebook generation who hate complexity and can't be bothered to read a manual for an hour before starting their game.

[If Obsidian + Kickstarter = ?]

Another one who signed up just for this thread. I used to post on the BIS forums though. I would support any game that Team Torment would have made before all the financial pressures at BIS/Interplay forced them to make action games like Icewind Dale II (and to a lesser extent IWD). IMO, Obsidian has only made two good games since BIS. MOTB and FONV. I never liked the KOTOR series or Alpha Protocol for some reason. Not because of the writing, which I'm sure was great, but because of the combat mechanics which I found unbearably dull.

 

I would love to see a PS:T 2 in spirit. To some extent MOTB was like that. Except the story, although excellent, was not nearly as good. In fact I'd also love to see an MOTB sequel in spirit. Of those of us who worship MCA as a god among men I think it is nearly always due to the genius that was PS:T. It wasn't merely a game. It managed to transcend game-ness into something that was more like a wonderful novel. It was the story that continuously pulled you through the game. I really wanted to solve the mysteries of the story. I think the way to repeat that is just to write a good story again which would intrigue the player and make the player want to discover whatever tantalizing secrets you've set up. Unfortunately great stories like that tend to be associated with a lack of replay value. Even FONV suffers from that. It's the inherent trade off I think you always find in CRPGs between story and strategic combat. Although I think it might be possible to write a compelling story for a game like BG2 which I still replay due to its fun combat. Bioware was never able to write, but Gaider and company definitely knew how to design a fun combat system. Then after you finished the story you could replay just for the strategic fun of the battles.

 

I did like the Planescape setting, but it sounds logistically impossible to purchase a license for it. Why not simply take most of the things that were great about the setting and use those? I liked the Planescape setting because it seemed like an interesting and complete world. Things like the lady of pain and made up words like 'birk' etc. It was wonderful. But you don't need Planescape for that. All it takes is some imagination to make up your own unique setting for the game with its own gods and mythology and little sayings and way of speaking.

 

So the perfect game would have a suspenseful/philosophical/thoughtful story like PS:T (and to a lesser extent MOTB) and the strategic battle mechanics of something like BG2 or TOEE. Battles should be sufficiently difficult and complex that they would be pretty much impossible to play in real time. You have to pause and think and micromanage your characters to win and even then you should not always win. That obviously implies either RTwP with an autopause as in the IE games or true turn based as in the Fallouts. I don't personally have much preference between the two.

 

As others have said you don't need any voice acting at all. Good voice acting is wonderful but its not essential. Of course if you could find voice actors who were competent and very cheap or even free well..., but that's the kind of thing you'd want to just tack on at the end if you had the time and money to do so. You can also skip the soundtrack. A good soundtrack can definitely add to the emotional punch, like Deionarra's Theme in PS:T, but getting someone like Mark Morgan is probably too expensive for a project like this. Although it is possible to find skilled, unknown composers who will work for peanuts or even free (for the credits). The only aspect of sound that I think is essential are the sound effects. Those are critical. One game that had particularly good, even memorable, sound effects was Arx Fatalis.

 

As far as graphics, as others have said, I don't want that to be the focus. As long as the graphics are as good as any of the Infinity Engine games that is more than sufficient. The focus on graphics should be adequacy and cost, not supremacy. In most modern games 90% of the focus is on the graphics and 10% on everything else. I would hope for something more like 80/20 in the other direction. Iron Tower Studios has even gone so far as to use the awful Torque3D engine and yet it looks like their game is shaping up to be wonderful. I don't think it matters whether the graphics are 2D or 3D. Just do whatever is the most cost effective. Probably that will come down to what your artists are actually better at and what graphics engines you have available. I guess you don't have the license to the Infinity Engine anymore, which is too bad because it was perfectly adequate. Maybe you could figure out a way to adapt the engine from the latest action game you made. Just make sure to remove any somersaults and other console kiddie 'ooh shiny!' and silly, unrealistic, fighting moves from it. Everyone is making games for them. Including you. They don't need to fund a game like this. Publishers already love the kiddies. You'd also have to convert it to turn based or RTw(a)P.

 

As far as deciding on a setting. I don't think the setting should be a primary consideration. I think the great Master Chris Avellone should let his imagination do its thing and come up with a story first. The greatness of the game hinges on that. You are the only game studio that has someone like you: a good, perhaps even gifted, writer. As a studio that's your greatest strength. Any publisher who doesn't realize that is a fool. If you come up with a good story idea in a futurustic Blade Runner-esque sci-fi setting go for that. If you come up with a good high fantasy story involving dragons and wizards and magic go that way. Or maybe multi-dimensional or time travel fantasy like Time Bandits or A Wrinkle in Time or something. I think one of the great things about the story in PS:T was that it had some some tragedy mixed with philosophy that really made you think. So maybe a story with some great tragedy at its center. One story that reminds me of the tragedy at the center of PS:T was the film A Tale of Two Sisters. In that film there was a ghost who didn't realize she was a ghost and when she did realize it she discovered that she was already dead.

 

Another way of choosing the setting is based on what engines you have available. Obviously a Scifi setting probably isn't going to work with your Dungeon Seige engine. Or maybe it could be adapted. I don't know.

 

I think it would be great if you and Feargus could come up with various price points and what it would buy us. How much extra money would it take to get at least some area-focused game music? How much extra money for this kind of setting or that kind of setting? How much to finish Torn or other projects you started but didn't finish? That sort of thing. That might give us various levels to shoot for. Although ultimately each of us can only contribute what we can afford.

 

Also is it possible that you could find a publisher or other investor who might be willing to meet whatever you can raise with crowd-funding as an investment? If you could raise, say, $500,000 with kickstart that would give you a million to work with.